How to Transfer a SBI! site to WordPress?

There are many reasons why you should consider moving a SBI! site to WordPress. One of the most important reasons includes better traffic and SEO optimization through easy to create content. But if that isn’t enough to convince you to move your site to WordPress, the following few crucial reasons that also save you a lot of money might catch your interest.

SBI! has spent over the past few years taking on WordPress and calling it an inferior platform to work with. But as years passed, SBI! was forced to release a plugin for the very same platform they used to bash.

Why is this?

Very simple, WordPress has taken over the world by storm by introducing a free to use content management system for anyone willing. You can install this platform on any of your website and take advantage of hundreds and thousands of plugins that save you money, optimize your site for speed and SEO and much more.

SBI! release their BizXpress plugin for WordPress after they knew their platform was in decline. This is a plugin that costs around $149 per year but gives you a keyword tool, action guide, monetization resources and many other goodies.

Whereas the SBI! platform itself charges your $300 per year for everything included in the BizXpress plugin resource guide minus website hosting.

The hosting platform used by SBI! is not fast enough to hold big websites and you have no choice to move your website if you want to continue using their platform.

This is important to note especially if you have multiple websites with SBI! The platform charges you $300 for each website you have on their platform which to us, sounds very unfair and costly. Meanwhile, if you decide to move to a third party webhost, you will have to use another platform to get your website up and running.

This is where WordPress comes in. WordPress can be hosted on any hosting service of your choice. It does not require you pay a fix amount of money that you are bound to pay no matter what. There are several hosting companies that give you attractive packages to work with. So why stick to $300 when you can get a server for as much as $8 a month?

Sure there is a huge argument that $8 a month will only get you a shared hosting service. There are a lot of people claiming that shared hosting is worst than SBI! hosting. But in our opinion, hosting from SBI! is nothing special or super fast that can justify the $300 steep price.

You will require a good hosting package and services if your website constantly gets around 5000 or more unique visitors a day. For this much traffic, you are probably going to need a dedicated server that can take the stress.

A good dedicated hosting plan will require you to pay around $80 a month, but in contrast to $300 you pay to SBI! for a server that is only comparable to a shared hosting plan, you are getting a lot in return.

SBI! doesn’t provide you lightning fast servers, they only give you servers that are slightly better than shared hosting. But given the customization options of WordPress, you can easily match or exceed load times by optimizing your website compared to SBI!.

Now the only thing that will be stopping you from moving your SBI! site to WordPress is your familiarity with the SBI! tools and community support. The good news is that you can keep all those extra resources and community support by getting the $149 BizXpress plugin or independent guide.

So by moving your site to WordPress from SBI!, you will not only keep your favorite tools and resources, you will also get thousands of other powerful plugins that will speed up the entire process of money making through a website.

In the final note before we begin our guide on how to move your SBI! website to a WordPress powered site, all we want to say is that using WordPress will give you tremendous amount of freedom. Freedom in customization, freedom to move your site to any hosting plan and freedom of designing and developing a site the way you want to.

Having said that, lets proceed to the tutorial now.

The most important thing you need to keep in mind before moving your website is that moving to a new platform will surely be overwhelming. Don’t stress once you start your WordPress site. This is natural for anyone moving to WordPress from SBI! for the first time.

As you begin understanding the options of customization available to you, you will instantly thank yourself for coming to a platform as good as WordPress.

Just remember that if your website is big and has regular traffic, the site can take several weeks or a few months to complete the transfer process. Just make sure that everything you do, you do as carefully as you can. So before you make your move, make sure you have a complete backup from the time of moving your website to the time it has completely moved.

If you do everything correctly, you won’t ever have to worry about being targeted by Google. Before you launch your website on the new platform, just make sure you test your website thoroughly for any broken links or pages. You don’t want your visitors to go away when they visit a page and it’s not there anymore.

Having said that, here are the 10 easy steps to move any SBI! website to WordPress.

Hop over to Google and start searching for a good WordPress theme. Don’t just look at the eye candy potential of the theme only. When selecting a WordPress Theme, you need to make sure that the theme has enough built-in options that can help you customize it from the dashboard.

To understand what a theme offers, you need to read reviews of people who are already using the theme.

Alternatively, you can also get a theme developed from a developer from scratch. It is entirely up to you.

We offer a very comprehensive WordPress customization service that you can use. We are experts in both SBI! and WordPress development. Plus we also offer a complete service that takes cares of the entire process of moving your SBI! site to WordPress along with complete customization from scratch.

Whatever you do, do not go for a free theme especially if your website is already making money and have a substantial traffic coming in daily. A free theme offers very few customization or optimization options. A lot of them are also not pre-optimized for mobile platforms. And in this day and age, any site without proper mobile optimization never gets on the top pages of Google.

STEP#2: Purchase web hosting

This is the most important part of moving your SBI! website to WordPress. You need to find a host that offers you a great package including a powerful server.

Only go for dedicated hosting if you have around 4000+ unique visitors daily. Otherwise a standard shared hosting web server should suffice.

Select a renowned host for your website to make sure you don’t have any downtimes or any other problems. A few hosting services we recommend included Bluehost, HostGator, Siteground and GoDaddy.

All of the above mentioned host companies offer a comprehensive cPanel system that helps you in moving your website smoothly by creating backups and restore points. You will also get free email with some of these hosting giants.

Expect to pay around $80-$100 a year for your hosting if you choose one of these domains. If you are moving your website just to save server costs, then you may not find a package that is attractive compared to SBI!. However, other features offered by WordPress easily surpass the need of saving money on hosting.

STEP#3: Setup WordPress to create a temporary URL

Before you start building your new site from scratch, make sure you do it on a temporary URL. Using hosting companies like HostGator or GoDaddy, you can easily create a subfolder under your domain and work on it while you move your content on the new website.

Make sure this sub-folder is locked and view-able by only you. If you are having trouble understanding how to keep your new folder private, you can always use tech support of your chosen hosting company to get help.

STEP#4: Transferring from SBI To WordPress on your new host by manually

When using WordPress, you will have to manually add content to your new site. Yes, this means that you will have to copy all your content from SBI! to WordPress page by page. Don’t worry though, it may sound like a lot but as soon as you get used to WordPress, everything will get easy and fast.

If you still do not have time to move your site manually, consider using our SBI! to WordPress service which utilizes the manual process of moving every single page from your SBI! to your new WordPress site.

As mentioned earlier, the process can take weeks or months depending on the size of the site. So take your time and don’t rush into launching the website before its ready.

Also another important question that a lot of people ask is whether their WordPress website should use posts or pages?

This is entirely up to you. However, expert recommendation is to use a combination of both pages and posts. For example, if you have a static website on SBI!, you can easily recreate this in WordPress by using the pages feature from the dashboard. You will also keep your .html extensions when doing this. But remember, your permalink structure isn’t automatically made so make sure you visit Settings >> Permalink to edit the settings.

Alternatively, you can do without .html use to 301 redirect from your domain .html URL.

Also remember that if your informational content is publish on pages instead of posts, you will install an additional RSS plugin then your pages go out on your feed. This isn’t done by default.

Using posts instead of pages is a good idea when most of your content is informational. Posts are great because they are automatically added to a feed and the ability for the viewer to comment on it is already enabled by default. Plus you can also add category tags to your posts that can help you further sort content for you and your viewers.

STEP#5: Time to Test Your Converted Pages/Posts

Before making an official launch, ensure that your website is perfectly converted. You need to manually test pages or use a web application to find broken links or pages before going live. Test the scripts, important pages like contact, about us, privacy policy and any other design elements that are crucial for your website.

Remember that if Google or your visitors find a broken link or page, it will contribute towards bad reputation and you may lose potential customers and SEO ranking. So testing your website is extremely important.

Our SBI! To WordPress service includes complete testing of the conversion before it can be launched. So if you don’t have time, consider getting it tested externally.

STEP#6: Unlock your domain from SBI (Solo Build It)

After extensive testing of your newly created WordPress site, it is time to unlock your domain from the SBI!. For that, you will need to contact SBI! Support via email or phone. Your request to unlock the domain will be forwarded to the respective department and it make take a couple of days for the transfer to finish.

Just remember not to place a request over the weekend and also remember to keep your original order in hand because the support will require that number to process your request.

How to Unlock SBI domain

We unlocked it(domain) before were transferring our domain to new host. you need to contact SBI! and ask them to unlock your domain.

You will see your DOMAIN status by open build.sitesell.com/manage.html (under Registration). When you see registrar status “OK” instead of “Domain Transfer Prohibited” you know you are ready. Usually it takes about a day to update.

Also another away to check domain status to login http://manage.opensrs.net/ under Domain Locking. When you see “Locking currently Disabled” you are ready to move your domain at new domain registrar company. Screenshot below:

STEP#7: Transfer and register your domain

When your request has been passed and you are ready to move your domain, simply go to your domain register company and start the transferring process. The process itself is very easy and only requires a couple of steps. We recommend using GoDaddy or NameCheap to register your domain because they offer some of the most competitive and excellent packages.

How to get SBI domain EPP Code (Auth Code)

We need Auth Code or EPP for transfering domain. So go to http://manage.opensrs.net/ with enter your domain, username and password (the one you got from SBI’s email when you purchased the SBI package). Once you are in, click on Domain Extras menu and get that code! Screenshot below:

STEP#8: Change nameservers form domain registrar (domain to point to your new hosting)

Now before you can move your temporary sub folder containing all the content on your WordPress, you need to change the nameservers from your hosting company. Every hosting company will give you a dashboard where you can change the nameservers by adding DNS address.

The DNS addresses will be given to you by your hosting company. If your hosting is with the same company you registered your domain name with, in most cases the DNS will be provided in the dashboard. If you are still confused about the process, you can always submit a support ticket with your hosting company.

A host like GoDaddy takes less than 24 hours to answer your queries. They also have a live chat feature that offers support within minutes.

STEP#9: Update all links and the temporary WordPress URL

Now that everything is ready, all you need to do is update your URLs. This step is only necessary if you created a sub folder that was serving as a temporary place holder for your new website on WP. Make sure you do this step before changing the name servers completely to ensure everything goes smooth. However it isn’t recommended to do so because you can still change the links after the nameserver changes.

Note: The above step is only necessary if you created a temporary website. If you are using a new domain, you don’t need to follow this step at all. However, we highly recommend using the same domain name as you used on SBI!

Changing domain names can be a serious blow to your reputation as a brand. Moreover, a new domain will not have the same kind of standing it did with Google unless you find a domain that is already on high authority and relevance with search engines.

Changing your URLs is a tricky job and should be done attentively. There are many plugins that on WordPress that will help you get this step done with smooth transition. However, our experience has shown us that trusting a plugin completely isn’t a good idea.

This is why we always recommend manually testing all your URLs. Sure it takes time and effort, but it also makes sure that your website doesn’t run into any kind of trouble.

If you want to make sure your new website launches with everything perfectly in place, try getting external testing help. Our SBI! To WordPress service is designed to make a smooth transition of this process. It includes customization and testing from the very start to the end. Plus we also give support even after the website conversion process has been completed.

STEP#10: Redirecting URL’s

When you are done testing and have finished the process of building the new site completely, you will need to do one last step before everything comes into picture. This is redirecting URLs from your previous domain to the new one.

This requires 301 redirect from old domain to new domain. This is a tricky part and should only be done by experts. If you are unsure on how to complete this step, try to take help externally. For a very nominal fee, any designer will be pleased to help you out with this.

Alternatively, our services already include the 301 redirect from your old domain to your new site.

We hope this guide will help you in moving your website from SBI! To WordPress. It is clearly the right thing to do because there is plenty of evidence available that moving a website from SBI! To WP instantly boosts website rankings and increases traffic.

With more traffic volume coming in to your website, expect to have more potential customers and ultimately more sales! Don’t wait too long, make the right move today and enjoy the same level of success your competitors are enjoying.